California leaders are calling on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release an estimated 200 Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants who advocates say were recently detained in the Bay Area and beyond in never-before-seen roundups.

Their contributions are particularly critical to California, they argue, the state with the largest Asian-American and Pacific Islander populations, including the largest Cambodian and Vietnamese communities.

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The reported sudden surge in ICE activity appears to spring in part from the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport immigrants with criminal records, even in circumstances where their home countries haven’t traditionally cooperated with U.S. removal orders. Activists said the majority of undocumented immigrants detained have prior criminal convictions, many from when they were young.

In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke earlier this month, the state’s Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus called on immigration officials to release the detained individuals, saying these immigrants have led productive lives in the U.S. for decades, despite their convictions. Members of the 12-person caucus include Senate Leader Kevin de León and Assemblymen David Chiu, Evan Low, Ash Kalra and Kansen Chu, among others.

“Many Southeast Asian Americans are survivors of the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge Genocide. They were part of the largest refugee resettlement in our country’s history and were placed in poverty ridden neighborhoods with significant crime rates,” the caucus said in the letter. “These factors coupled with language barriers, war trauma and lack of adequate resources contributed to numerous challenges adjusting to their new home.”

“Some of these refugees were infants and children when they arrived and made mistakes in their youth resulting in prison sentences for their transgressions,” the letter continued. “Upon release, most are productive members of society, support their U.S. citizen families and adhere to the conditions of their release, including checking in with ICE.”

Echoing a September statement from ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan, ICE spokesman James Schwab said Tuesday, “International law obligates each country to accept the return of its nationals ordered removed from the United States. The United States itself routinely cooperates with foreign governments in documenting and accepting its citizens when asked, as do the majority of countries in the world.”

Schwab previously declined to provide further comment and did not answer questions about the purported deportations, nor requests for data on the number of Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants deported from the U.S. so far this year.

It’s unclear if the Department of Homeland Security responded to the caucus’s letter. A spokeswoman for DHS, which oversees ICE, said the agency does not comment on letters sent to Duke.

Many of those detained have been transferred to detention centers in southern states as they await deportation. Others have already been sent back to their home countries, according to local activists.

Vietnamese and U.S. officials in 2008 signed a repatriation memorandum that in part said Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in America before 1995 would not be subject to deportation. Activists, however, said some of the individuals detained in October arrived before 1995, leaving them to wonder whether some of these deportations are legal.

Cambodia in 2002 signed a repatriation agreement with the United States which allowed for the U.S. to deport a certain number of Cambodian immigrants back to that country each year.

But only this year have deportations among Cambodians spiked to these levels, according to activists. They said an estimated 500 Cambodians have been detained nationwide since the memo was signed, compared to 100 in October alone, making these the largest raids ever to target the Cambodian community. The Department of Homeland Security in September issued visa sanctions on Cambodia, Eritrea, Sierra Leone and Guinea, immediately halting all issuance of temporary visas.

“The unjust detentions and deportations of roughly 100 Cambodian and 95 Vietnamese people speak to the federal administration’s lack of compassion for our Southeast Asian immigrant population, including those who escaped political persecution and genocide to come to the United States in search of freedom and opportunity,” said Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, in a statement. “This clear violation of the MOUs is a betrayal of our country’s commitment to these communities and only further undermines the integrity and sanctity of our country’s diplomatic agreements.”

Several members of Congres, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Ro Khanna, sent a similar letter to DHS on Nov. 9.

Tatiana Sanchez covers race, demographics and immigration for the Bay Area News Group. She got her start in journalism in the California desert, where she covered the marginalized immigrant communities of the eastern Coachella Valley. Before heading north, Sanchez spent a year as immigration reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune, where she covered the region's multicultural communities, social justice topics and life on the U.S. -Mexico border. A Bay Area native, she received a master's in journalism from Columbia University. In 2017, Sanchez was part of a team of East Bay Times reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. She's based in San Jose.

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